Mission on the campus and beyond

More and more people are coming to the seminary cafeteria from our neighborhood and neighboring villages to get free hot meals. However, for us it is a good opportunity to meet not only their physical, but also spiritual needs. Our faculty, staff and student volunteers deliberately sit beside people they don’t know, make friends with them, listen to their stories, provide comfort and pastoral care.

The delivery of bread baked by UETS kitchen staff and food packages to some remote villages in the Kyiv region, which were under occupation, is underway. Our volunteers go there couple times a week. There, they also talk to people, ask about their needs and pray for them. Overall, we serve around 1,000 meals a week.

Yesterday, volunteers from churches in Western Ukraine started building a new roof over our maintenance premises, which had been directly hit by Russian self-propelled artillery. Your prayers for successful completion of this work, which might take around 10 days, will be appreciated.

Amid the raging war, UETS continues performing its mission of training national church leaders both in Ukraine and beyond. Pray, please, about our residential and non-residential students who are currently learning online and our students of applied theology in Central Asia who are passing their modular sessions.

Continue praying, please, for our new short-term 6-week training for lay counselors, we launched three weeks ago. As a reminder, the course is intended for church ministers and volunteers who often are the first to help and listen to war victims.

Also, we would appreciate prayers about our enrollment campaign which started yesterday. Taken the current circumstances, including the economic situation, with many believers having lost their jobs and/or homes or actively involved in relief ministry, there are many important decisions for us to make. Right now we think about launching new short-term programs for pastors aimed at meeting some of the challenges in ministry at the wartime.